The present disclosure generally relate to electroplating, and more specifically, to electrochemical etching of metal substrates.
The use of graphene in electronic devices and semiconductor applications has increased in recent years due to the desirable properties graphene offers. For example, graphene has remarkable electrical properties including impressively high current density, mobility and saturation velocity, and 2D geometry of graphene also makes it compatible to the conventional CMOS top-down process flow. Thus, it has become desirable to incorporate graphene into semiconductor devices.
A growing trend for producing graphene is the use of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of hydrocarbons to synthesize graphene films on metal substrates, especially copper foils. Thereafter, the metal substrate may be removed and the graphene may be transferred to another dielectric substrate. The conventionally accepted means for removing the metal substrate from the graphene is to immerse the graphene/metal substrate in a chemical etchant to dissolve the metal. However, the dissolved metal by-product causes environmental pollution and increases production costs incurred from having to properly dispose of the metal by-product.